


Out of the Whales' Belly

by Trash_Queen



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: For Tags, High Chaos (Dishonored), Whales, like thats it thats. all i got, strange happenings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 09:01:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9598994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trash_Queen/pseuds/Trash_Queen
Summary: On their way into the slaughterhouse the two of them are assaulted by a manner of sights and smells; viscera and rotting sea flesh, pounds of meat and gallons of blood spilled everywhere so that if you're not careful, or wearing the right kind of boots, you land flat on the ground near something pink and squirmy.One year, The Month of Earth is marked by births.





	

**Author's Note:**

> idk i wrote this a while ago lol b/c hey dishonored is full of strange shit, i havent played dishonored 2 and martin is still my favorite old man

One year, The Month of Earth is marked by births.

Not ones of the regular city folk in Dunwall, but by what has only been described in Abbey records as "unnatural". It's fairly early in Martin's tenure at Dunwall's abbey when he witnesses it.

They receive a call from Rothwild's slaughterhouse- " _something come out of a whale, something what's scarin' the men, even the butchers_. _"_ Bundry Rothwild is there to meet them at the gate, arms crossed and cigarette screwed firmly into the corner of his mouth, smoked to a stub. Martin, standing off to the side of Overseer Vaughn, guesses it's not his first and definitely not his last. It's a wintry day, the morning sun has barely begun is ascent.

Their way into the slaughterhouse the two of them are assaulted by a manner of sights and smells; viscera and rotting sea flesh, pounds of meat and gallons of blood spilled everywhere so that if you're not careful, or wearing the right kind of boots, you land flat on the ground near something pink and squirmy. They're also assaulted by sound- creaking metal, the distant buzzing of saws, men chattering (for all the commotion, Rothwild has not stopped production). They're stuck trying to sort out the ambient noise and the hurried story being regaled rapid-fire and hidden under a thick accent from the butcher who discovered it.

"I swears 't'was- I didn't- look, I ain't no outsider-worshiper! I just cut the whales open, thas' me job, jus' cut the things up to remove the guts but- I don't- I don't-" He scrambles for more words as they approach the whale in question. "I ain't no heretic, honest, I don' know anything'-'"

"Shut up Lonnie," Rothwild cuts in. He's replaced the stubby cigarette with a fresh one and is taking vigorous draws from it. "Go work another station. 'Seer's have heard all they need from you."

Lonnie scrambles off and Rothwild introduces them to their particular beast.

"This here's her. You can see," He points to its' stomach. "Righ' there, the arm. They ain't cut no more n' that. Scares 'em shitless, bunch a' old maids."

The whale was suspended by hooks and chains over the slaughter station; and, true to Rothwild's word, was a blood covered arm, hanging slim out of the fat and flesh. Vaughn leaned closer to observe before climbing up on the platform to take a closer look, gesturing for Martin to follow. They're both bent at the waist, crouching to slide under to the cut. The whale's corpse is heavy above them, feels like its' going to drop from the hooks at any second. It's a terrifying thought.

They end up crouched by the opening, Overseer Vaughn taking the arm in his hand to examine it, looking through his mask to where the rest of it is hidden in the belly. Martin busies himself with inspecting the flesh around it- the layers of bulging fat squeezing outwards from thick skin. After a moment, Vaughn asks Rothwild if the corpse can be lifted any- he grunts an affirmative, and a minute later it's hoisted far enough up that they can almost stand straight again. The chains creak in their pulleys as it sways, and for a minute the whole thing looks… alive, almost- like the whale is swimming above them, like the arm is beckoning at them.

Vaughn draws his sword then, asking Martin if he's ready- he nods an affirmative and draws his sword as well, trying to ready himself for what might come out.

It might have been easier to cut through with one of the butchers' saws- for a moment Martin wonders if Lonnie would be willing to assist. Vaughn's sword seems to be cutting through the skin painfully slowly, splitting it inch by rubbery inch until something pops free and lands on the floor with a wet _splat_.

The _something_ is a length of intestines- so vast as to only be a minute part of whatever is left, Martin is sure- and tangled inside of it is what was attached to the arm. It's a woman's body, wrapped in skin that's corpse-pale, stretching over small breasts and almost too-protruding bones. It's hair is short, matted down with the same blood and clear slime that covers the rest of it. The slime near its' nose and open mouth lays undisturbed, the chest is unmoving- Martin looks to Vaughn and asks "Stillborn, maybe?", as if such a condition would apply here. Vaughn takes it as a joke, chuckles a bit and goes back to looking from the figure to the wound. 

Martin leans closer to inspect the face- had the body been nourished instead of sallow, it might have been a handsome creature. He held one of the eyes open a moment- they would have been round, slightly deep-set. The nose was pleasant with the high forehead and cheekbones, the mouth had a downward sort of turn that on any living being would have belonged to someone who was constantly in thought. But the hollow cheeks and deep circles and mucus did much to ruin the whole thing. Ah, well. Martin supposed it wasn't the purview of these particular entities to look pleasant. He turned his attention back to the whales' belly- there was nothing unusual looking there, no sticky shadows clinging to what little they could see inside, no black eyes peering back at them. Neither of them had seen the outsider or the void before- maybe it would be a man, maybe something akin to a giant squid, the multi-tentacled monsters that supposedly dragged ships larger than freighters down to the bottom. Maybe the outsider took the shape of the wale, maybe it had no shape at all. After they spent fifteen minutes on it, there seemed to be nothing else to see.

They ordered the slaughterhouse shut down for the week- with much grumbling from Rothwild, who begrudgingly agreed after being threatened with an investigation from the Abbey itself- and all of the whale corpses were to be requisitioned and inspected, lest they find similar things inside them. As for the one they found, it was wrapped head-to-toe in an old drop cloth, and the two of them carried it to the railcar they had taken. It was an awkward fit- two grown, live men and a gangly corpse held between them. The ride back to Holger Square seemed longer than last time.

Ultimately, the investigation into the other whale corpses and Rothwild's employees revealed nearly nothing: no more mysterious bodies, but a few of the workers had relatives who dabbled in outsider-worship, bone charms or potions. All in all it seemed like old wives' tales and blue-collar superstition, desperation in some cases. Nevertheless, they were dealt with accordingly. Rothwild reopened his slaughterhouse the minute they cleared him, free of any stain of the occult and steaming at being out of a weeks worth of labor and cash.

Correspondence with other Abbeys across the isles had come back filled with tell of a rash of similar instances- three more here in Gristol, two in Morely, two in Tyvia, a full four in Serkonos- twelve in total, and a tentative report of a thirteenth from another Tyvian overseer. The Oracular order had taken to stargazing each night, trying to divine some true meaning or cause from the heavens. None had come thus far. The general consensus was to keep this from the people- a few rumors here and there, gossip amoung dock hands and their wives, sure- but no confirmation had come from anywhere yet.

The corpses were autopsied, each organ and bone inspected and entrails read, in some cases, before being stitched back together and burned. Dunwall's abbey followed suit- Overseer Gratham, an elderly man whose purview turned more towards the clerical and medical than the sword in proportion with his age, had taken up the mantle of impromptu medical examiner. Nothing, it seemed, was amiss- "Aside from the lack of a bellybutton, a perfectly regular specimen in all respects, if malnourished," was his conclusion. It was sent down to the furnaces the next day, and aside from the low thrumming of anxiety-near-dread, things returned to normal.

The loyalist conspiracy came and went, years later. The heart whispers, "I feel a great age ending" when Corvo takes it to the city, and Martin thinks he hears the same whisper, feels a voice from _somewhere, nowhere,_ pass by him when he's in the Abbey's stocks. In the lighthouse, when he's holding a gun to his head for his own foolishness and Corvo holds his sword to his throat, the same voice is carried on the wind scraping the edge of the lighthouse walls. He doesn't hear it this time, he's too busy beating Corvo to the punch. He's angry, he should be- their pet assassin they tried to put down before he could turn around and bite them with Emily's ascension to power and shut them all out. It was all Havelock's paranoia, and he didn't see it, and it cost them. He shot himself before Corvo could cut his head off.

Instead of void-blue or cosmos-black, he was left looking at the grey ceiling, listening to Corvo rustle through his things before walking off to deal Havelock his death. There was blood pooling out behind his head. He was conscious, oddly enough, but he couldn't _move_ -

The voice that was outside drifted in, and it felt like hands on his face. _Oh Teague,_ it smiled, _You've always had old gods watching after you._

**Author's Note:**

> alludes to old gods because hey. you really cant get rid of em. also it is very important to me that the whale beings have no bellybuttons


End file.
